


Recipe For Roadkill

by twitchtipthegnawer



Series: RFR Slasherverse [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, F/M, Guro, Rabies Meme, Yandere, slasher fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-27 17:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: One shot tequila, one shot cinnamon schnapps, and one shot whiskey. Or did you mean something else?Six friends approach a farmhouse that hasn't had anyone inside in a very, very long time. There are things scratching inside the walls too big to be a rat. What noise do raccoons make, again? And why should you try to root for a group of hapless teens, when you know what they're about to come face to face with?





	1. Chapter 1

Kayla looked up from her phone suddenly, shouting, “Turn here!”

Brandon glared at the side of the road. “I don’t see it, what - ”

“We passed it.” She slumped back in her seat. “Turn around at the next driveway.”

“Would’ve been nice if you could’ve warned me a _little_ earlier.”

“The signal out here’s shit, nothing I can do about it. Now, _turn around.”_

Huffing with annoyance, Brandon did as she said, sneaking a look at the frowning brunette beside him. Her hair was pulled up in a pair of remarkably messy braids, and a large, plastic bag sat in her lap.

This time around he spotted the overgrown gravel driveway. Tree branches scraped the sides of his car, grass flattening under his tires. They broke free to see a circular lawn, better trimmed than the garden (though that wasn’t saying much). In the center stood an immense, looming tree, and around the sides were a variety of buildings.

Parking beside the beat up Buick already waiting there, Brandon unfolded his lanky body from the cramped car and stepped outside. The air was muggy, causing both him and Kayla to glance at one another dubiously. “Did they decide to wait in the barn, or the house?” Brandon asked her.

“House,” she answered. “Apparently the barn’s got a big hole in the floor? And the house is set up with plenty of fans.”

“I hope they have dehumidifiers too,” Brandon griped.

Muddy ground and buzzing mosquitoes aside, the faded, blue house didn’t look truly abandoned. Lights flickered in the upstairs windows, a warm glow to contrast the overcast sunset outside. What parts of the walls hadn’t been swallowed by bushes and ivy appeared to be in decent repair, if a bit faded with time and weather.

Kayla crossed her arms over her chest, the bottles in her bag clinking as they were jostled together. Brandon rapped on the peeling paint of the door, his letterman jacket clinging to him uncomfortably while he waited for someone to answer it.

Luckily, the wait wasn’t long. As soon as the door swung open, he found himself wrapped in a hug, actually lifted off his feet by his friend Jacob. Blinking the brown beard out of his face, Brandon elbowed his way free. His laugh was forced, but Jacob didn’t seem to notice.

“Nice of you to join us!” He said, finally releasing Brandon from his burly embrace.

“We were promised snacks,” said Kayla wryly.

Behind Jacob stood a smaller teen wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a hunched posture. “And I was promised booze,” he said, peeking around the much broader boy to look at Kayla.

Rolling her eyes, she held up the plastic bag. This was enough to finally get Jacob to step aside, allowing the two of them to enter the room. It was bare except for a filthy rug covering the hardwood floor, the walls adorned only with two large windows and three doorways. The ones straight ahead and to their right hung empty, respectively revealing a kitchen counter and an iron stove. In the far right corner was the final, open door, which appeared to lead to a linen closet.

“Austen, _please_ tell me your mom doesn’t expect us to hang out in here,” Brandon wrinkled his nose and eyed the rug with distaste. “The football locker rooms are cleaner than this.”

“They’re the rugby locker rooms, too,” Jacob reminded him with a friendly shove (that happened to send him stumbling).

All Brandon did was laugh it off while Austen, despite all his nerdy nervousness, gave Jacob a bright smile. Any offence Brandon’s comment might have caused melted away as soon as Jacob spoke, and so Brandon replied in an upbeat tone, “No worries, the upstairs is better. That’s where the chips are.”

Kayla said pointedly, “Well then, what are you waiting for? Lead the way.”

Austen did, walking first to the right (revealing that the stove was mystifyingly attached to a brick fireplace) and from there to the left, which led to a tiny, cramped hallway. “If you keep going this way there’s the bathroom, which has the back door and another way to the kitchen. Up here is the stairs.”

“There’s three entrances to the bathroom?” Kayla wrinkled her nose.

“Four, if you count the window,” Austen corrected.

Jacob laughed and clapped her on the back. “Don’t worry, us boys’ll be on our best behavior! No trying to sneak up on you while you’re taking a piss.”

The four of them continued bickering as they went up the narrow staircase, and Brandon very nearly kneed Kayla in the back when she wobbled, only barely catching her before they both went slip-sliding down to the floor. At the top of the stairs was a hallway that, as promised, was perfectly clean. The pale green walls smelled of new paint, and all three doors hung perfectly straight in their frames.

One of those doors was cracked open, revealing the spill of warm light Kayla and Brandon had seen from outside. It also released a delicious, sweet smell, and Kayla lit up at the same time Brandon exclaimed, “Brownies? Nice!”

The true cause of Kayla’s excitement, however, was revealed when they entered to see a pair of redheads sitting across the room from one another. They looked up at the same time and smiled back at her, the one with long curls in a ponytail standing abruptly to give Kayla a hug. Austen leaned towards Jacob and muttered, not quite quiet enough to be subtle, “Ever notice how they smile the same even though they _hate_ each other?”

Leaning down, Jacob whispered into Austen’s ear, “Well, they _are_ identical twins.” His breath had Austen shivering and pink flushing his cheeks.

Despite their purported indistinguishability, Emily and Megan were very easy to tell apart. Emily’s hair swung back and forth from its green scrunchie, and her pastel blue skirt was impeccably pleated. Her lip gloss left a shiny spot on Kayla’s cheek when she kissed it. On the other hand, Megan had given herself a buzz cut recently, and wore a denim jacket with the sleeves cut short. The back featured a black crescent-shaped patch with white lettering reading: “Hunting Hyenas.”

For all of their differences, Kayla was clearly happy to be handed off from one to the other as Emily finished greeting her and went to give Jacob a kiss - on the lips, this time. Austen averted his eyes, and Megan made a disgusted sound that got her swatted by Kayla. Brandon only watched with something between exasperation and exhaustion.

Six teens settled in for the night, snacks piled onto paper plates and booze poured in red solo cups. Kayla drained her bourbon and coke within seconds of mixing it, and was in the process of pouring herself another while the others settled onto beanbag chairs and picnic blankets Austen had brought. “Think you wanna slow down a bit?” Megan asked her wryly.

“Oh please, like I couldn’t drink you all under the table.”

“Even Jacob?”

“What about me?” Jacob chimed in.

A slow grin on her normally sour face, Megan said, “I think Kayla wants to challenge you to a drinking contest.”

“Aw man,” Jacob leaned back and seemed completely oblivious to the way Emily and Austen both eyed where his shirt rode up. “You know I’m always on board for that, but I’ve gotta stay sober. We decided I’m designated driver in case of emergencies, remember?”

“Yeah, but how much do you _really_ expect an emergency?” Emily asked. “It’s not fair you can’t have fun too!”

“You never know,” Jacob’s voice went dark and rumbly. “Anything can happen in the woods.”

Silence fell for a split second, and then Jacob pounced on Emily, rubbing his beard on her cheek as she shrieked in laughter. He slipped a hand up to her boob while the others were busy rolling their eyes, and she only snorted and pushed at him, muttering, “Be patient, big guy.”

Outside, the last of the sun’s rays died. Conversation didn’t flow smoothly - it was so rare for six teenagers to socialize well amongst themselves, and this group was hardly the most cohesive. Kayla ran between Megan and Emily awkwardly, and Brandon and Austen seemed utterly uninterested in one another unless Jacob was facilitating things. Which, considering his preoccupation with his girlfriend, he rarely was.

Of course, the more they drank, the easier things got. Until finally Kayla turned off the construction lamp in the corner of the room, leaving a small flashlight in the center of their social circle as the only source of light. When she went to sit back on the cushion she’d claimed, she stumbled; despite the fact that she’d drunk a bottle of vodka nearly on her own, the alcohol was only getting to her now.

Her hand hit the wall to brace herself, but unexpectedly, it gave beneath her weight. Brandon shouted in alarm as she went tumbling into a dark space. Turning her head, she saw a bunch of fuzzy, white spiders less than an inch from her face. She squeaked once in fear, then again when hands closed around her ankles and pulled her out. Brandon released her and helped dust cobwebs out of her hair.

“Er, so that was a door,” said Austen awkwardly. “Sorry I didn’t warn you. The latch must’ve broken off.”

“It’s fine.” Though Emily sounded more tired than angry, she was still shaking a bit.

Megan leaned in to try and see through the gloom. “What’s even back there?”

With a literal handwave, Austen explained, “It’s like an attic thing. My mom said there’s nothing except spiders and mold and moldy spiders. Oh, and a door.”

“A door?” Megan asked.

“Moldy spiders?” Emily asked in the same tone, at the same time.

“It’s safe, is my point,” Austen finished with a huff. He then reached between the girls to close the waist-high, square door, putting an end to that topic of conversation.

There was a pause as Kayla finally resituated herself. This time, she was careful not to lean back against the wall. Brandon asked, “So, was there a reason you plunged us all into darkness before you fell into a spider nest?”

“Yeah,” said Kayla. “I was gonna say, it’s definitely late enough for scary stories by now.”

“Did you have one you wanted to tell?” Emily asked sweetly.

In response, Kayla gave a prolonged, “Uhhhhh,” and picked up the bottle of vodka to drain its remnants.

Jacob chuckled, then nudged Austen with one elbow. “Didn’t you have a scary story about this place? Your mom mentioned something when I asked her if we could use it.”

Looking torn between leaning away from the ungentle nudges and leaning into Jacob’s warmth, Austen pushed his glasses up his nose to hide a blush. “It’s not really a story. More like, like an anecdote or something.”

“Not the way I heard it.” Jacob had a grin on his face, and the others were looking more and more curious. Austen sighed, but gave in rather easily.

“Okay. Okay, er, so you know how this place has a basement? Well - ”

“It has a basement?” Megan cut in. “I didn’t see any stairs.”

Giving her a dirty look, Austen sniffed and said, “They’re in a weird spot. There’s one of those old wooden doors set into the ground by the garden, too, but you can’t really see it under the bushes. _Anyway,_ the basement’s super creepy. There’s this section right in the middle that’s walled off, just a bunch of shitty stonework that’s crumbling up top, like in Cask of Amontillado.

“The stairs aren’t even attached at the bottom, they just kinda hover over the floor and are anchored to the wall, so they creak and wobble the whole way down. The ceiling’s weird too, you have to bend almost double by the stairs but then it gets higher really abruptly further in. There are these shelves my mom found, and they’re full of these old jars. They probably have tomatoes or beets or something in them, but they’re too murky to see inside properly so my mom’s kinda scared of opening them up.”

Five people held their breath as Austen got into the swing of storytelling. Emily practically trembled until Jacob cuddled her close to his warmth. Megan seemed transfixed, and Brandon and Kayla exchanged impressed glances. How much was made up, if _any,_ was unclear, but Austen’s surprising skill kept them enraptured.

“There’s this weird set up too, around the back wall. A shower and a utility sink. Except the sink is _right next to_ the shower - you could use both at the same time. Oh, and there’s this red paint handprint, halfway down the stairs. And, uh…”

Okay, perhaps he wasn’t as skilled as all that. Jacob leaned in and said, _sotto voce,_ “What about the hospital record?”

“...It’s, just speculation, but my mom said the last person who owned this place was a little old lady, right? When my mom got it, the old lady asked if she was planning on living there, and when my mom said nah, it’s an office, she looked all relieved. She said, ‘Good. Whoever lives in that house, they all end up cursed.’ My mom asked what she meant and - ”

“Wait, did she _actually_ have a southern accent?” Brandon asked dubiously.

Swiftly, Brandon was shushed by Kayla, and Austen could continue as though there had been no interruption. “She said that when her daughter lived there, she died in this really weird accident. The tree outside had a branch break off, but it froze where it was in the winter, so when it melted in the spring and finally fell, it didn’t make a sound. Just - fell, and hit her.”

“Widowmaker,” Megan breathed.

“What?” Brandon whispered.

“Shh!” Kayla said again.

“If you guys are gonna keep interrupting, I won’t keep telling the story.” Austen crossed his arms (oblivious of how childish it made him look, especially given his tiny stature and drunken slurring).

Shaking his head, Jacob whined, “Hey, no, you were just getting to the best part.”

For once Austen was not swayed by Jacob paying attention to him. “You tell it then.” His stubborn moue said he wouldn’t change his mind on this.

“Alright alright. So.” Jacob leaned in, the flashlight under his face and casting strange shadows on his beard and blue eyes. “When the branch hit her, this lady actually ended up in the hospital for a couple of days. While she was there, one of the nurses told her and, y’know, the old lady too I guess, about how there was this _other_ lady who lived in the house like, fifty years ago. She got bitten by a rabid raccoon.

“She lived alone, so like, by the time anyone found her she’d already gotten super sick. She was babbling crazy stuff and tried to bite the nurses when they tried to give her a bath. Like, foaming at the mouth and everything, really _really_ sick. They were basically just waiting for her to die, except when they stopped paying attention to her for like a second, she disappeared.”

“Did she teleport?” Megan asked wryly.

A mumble came from Austen’s direction, “You’re telling it wrong.”

Wisely, Jacob chose to acknowledge Megan rather than Austen. “Nah, I meant they found her room with the like, window broken. Blood on the ground that they tested, and was hers. Stuff like that. Apparently the lady who sold the house to Austen’s mom, the old southern one? She thought the creepy rabies-infested invalid crawled her way back here. Died somewhere on the property and haunts people who try to take her land. She says if you listen carefully, you can hear the same racoon that killed her chittering at night. And someone whispering the woman’s name over and over, _‘Molly… Molly…’”_

Silence reigned for a beat, and then Emily snorted. “Racoons at night, in Ohio? _Oh,_ scary. Sorry babe, but I liked Austen’s part better.”

“That’s cause my part was _real,”_ Austen said poutily. “Jacob embellished too much.”

“Real?” Brandon sounded dubious.

“You can check out the basement if you don’t believe me. There’s way more spiders down there though. And they really are moldy - like a bunch of bright white fuzzy zombies.”

No one looked particularly eager to actually check it out, after that. Kayla turned the lights back on at Brandon’s pretend-joking remarks about how, “Racoon chitters can be pretty scary, y’know.” Megan laughed at him openly, but didn’t stop Kayla.

Debate sprang up, whether or not to play spin the bottle, and if not, then what they _should_ do instead. The drinking wound down, and Austen began to nod off - on _Brandon’s_ shoulder, which the other boy looked immensely uncomfortable with. Jacob and Emily whispered together, the occasional giggle cluing the others into what the topic was.

“Who wants to bet they’re gonna sneak off to bone?” Kayla asked, glad the happy couple was too immersed in themselves to pay attention.

Dubiously, Brandon said, “Where would they even? I mean, I haven’t seen any couches or whatever. And they _can’t_ use the murder shower in the basement.”

“There’s another shower downstairs,” Megan put in. “But seriously, I don’t wanna think about my sister’s sex life.”

“Does the water work at all?”

Megan flicked his shoulder. “Stop being such a skeptic, Brandon. It works, I used the toilet before you guys got here.”

“I wouldn’t,” Austen piped up. Brandon startled, jostling the sleepy boy off him. “There’s black stuff crusted on the bottom of the tub. I think something died in there.”

Wrinkling her nose in disgust, Megan said, “I don’t think I wanna use the toilet _ever_ again, fuck.”

“On that note,” Austen stood, rubbing one eye under his glasses. “I need to piss. Be right back.”

Off he headed, soon to be followed when Jacob stood and pulled Emily up with him, a salacious grin on his face leaving no question as to what they might be planning. “We’re gonna go check out the basement. Anyone wanna come with?”

The look of pure disbelief on Megan’s face would probably be considered a work of art by someone, somewhere. Jacob just laughed, Emily smacking his chest in mock-bashfulness, a mutter of _“Stop it, Jacob Moore!”_ And they walked out the door as close together as a pair in a three legged race.

Thankfully, Megan, Brandon and Kayla were fine continuing their conversations on their own while they waited for Austen to return. As minutes stretched on, however, Kayla began to grow worried. “Do you think he fell asleep down there?”

 “I hope not,” Brandon bounced his eyebrows up and down and made unblinking eye contact with Megan. “Wouldn’t want him to get a rude awakening.”

“Stop, don’t be disgusting,” ordered Megan.

“I think I can hear them,” Kayla whispered with unadulterated horror.

Everyone in the room stopped talking and listened intently. After a few seconds, Megan shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”

“No, Kayla’s right. Those motorcycles must’ve killed your eardrums.”

_“How do you know about that?”_

“Jesus, it’s not like it’s a secret. Don’t give Kayla that look, she didn’t tell me.”

Holding up her palms in the universal symbol of _“I’m innocent!”_ Kayla weathered Megan’s glare - until. There it was again. All three heads turned towards the floor and took on varying shades of grimaces. “Okay, I _definitely_ heard a thump that time,” Megan admitted.

Another _thump,_ and this time Brandon’s brows furrowed. “Wait,” he said. “Isn’t it coming from the door over there?”

One finger pointed to the door in the wall, the one Kayla had fallen through. She swallowed, suddenly hyper-aware she might’ve been only feet away from an animal which had made the house its home. Maybe even a raccoon. The trio exchanged glances at one another, seeming to trade silent dares to get up and investigate.

Eventually Megan rolled her eyes and took that unspoken dare. She got up, dusted off her jeans, and approached the wooden slab with her hand outstretched. The lamp sent her shadow looming over her on the wall, huge, but shrinking with each step, until. Another _thump._ She took that final step and pushed it open all at once, like ripping off a bandaid.

Darkness yawned beyond. She turned, a smile on her face, and said, “See? Nothing.”

And all hell broke loose.

Kayla lashed out, barely able to grab Megan’s ankle and yank her off balance in time to send the pale blur behind her streaking over her head. Whatever it was landed with the sound of splintering wood against the opposite wall, and then the room filled with a new sound. Chittering. Shrill and furious chittering.

Brandon staggered to his feet, trying to put himself between the girls and the creature. This gave them enough time to back towards the hallway, but they underestimated how quickly the thing could move.

In a flash it was on Brandon, a hand with overgrown, filthy fingernails gripping his hair. It spun to smash his face into the lamp. The first blow dented in the metal grating intended to protect the light. The second had the room filling with a stink like burned meat and hair as Brandon screamed, his face mashed into heated glass.

The third shattered that glass entirely, but just when Brandon began twitching at the electricity racing through his veins, something hit the creature in the back of the head. It paused, allowed Brandon to fall to the floor as it turned. In the remaining light of the flashlight, it was positively goulish. A monstrous skull over half its face, bits of desiccated flesh still clinging to it. The jawbone hung by two ropy strands of tendon, long dried and frayed.

Outside, it began to rain.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Megan said to Kayla. She sounded out of breath. Terrified.

On the floor, Brandon gasped, letting them know he was alive. His labored breathing didn’t sound good, but it was better than nothing. Kayla looked at the bottle that had fallen, unbroken, at the creature’s feet. It stood hunched over strangely, resting its weight on one hand. Blood caked the filthy furs it had slung over its shoulders.

“Neither can I,” Kayla agreed.

They both turned and ran. Towards the stairs, Kayla following right behind Megan. This was a terrible idea, as it turned out; Kayla’s foot slipped and she landed on her ass hard, skidding forward enough to take out Megan’s knees. They went tumbling down the narrow stairway together, handing in a heap at the bottom.

As they frantically tried to disentangle themselves, someone grabbed Kayla’s bicep. She shrieked, and Megan lashed out without looking, only to have her fist land on a soft, familiar cheek. “Hey!” Emily cried out.

All at once Kayla went limp. “Oh, Thank god.”

This made separating the two girls much easier, and then Jacob was looking between them, his hair in as much disarray as theirs. “What happened? We heard a crash, was that you two falling down the stairs or…?”

“No, we - there was a monster upstairs, she - ”

Rolling her eyes, Emily cut Megan off, “Come on Mimi, you really think you’re gonna scare Jacob with the scary story _he_ came up with?”

“She’s not joking.” Kayla put a hand on either of Emily’s shoulders, staring into the shocked girl’s eyes with pure, panicked mania. “There’s a monster up here, and it’ll be coming after us any second, holy fuck, Kayla, _I threw the vodka at it.”_

“What? Wait,” Emily pushed at Kayla, but she didn’t budge. “I don’t hear anything following you, though.”

As one, Kayla and Megan looked up the stairs, horror dawning on them. “Where’s Brandon?” Jacob asked, sounding almost plaintive.


	2. Chapter 2

Croaking sounds emerged from Brandon’s throat, clearly agonized, but also breathless. He clawed his way along the ground as best he could with still-twitching limbs. His head lifted and turned side to side, eyes wheeling wildly and blinking away the blood that dripped from his glass-slashed forehead. His nose was a melted horror, nostrils fused and forcing him to struggle to breathe through bleeding lips.

Unbeknownst to him, the creature,  _ Molly,  _ crawled on all fours after him. Under her rotting furs she wore a simple, white button up tucked into a very long and very loose denim skirt. Painfully normal but for the blood and filth, tears revealing places where her prey had struggled. Her grey eyes were wild where they shone out from her skull mask, utterly inhuman and uncaring of Brandon’s struggle.

Her blood-caked hand reached out to grasp the bag. The moment he heard the rustle of cheap plastic, Brandon turned his head towards it, though he didn’t hesitate in his mad scramble for freedom. Foamy drool slipped from her lips to the floor when she circled around him. He jerked and flinched with each sound, his heartbeat almost audible to the whole room, loud and panicked. His muscles twitched with residual electricity.

Breathing to his left - Brandon’s hand hit the wall when he wildly flung it out. He tried to use it to crawl towards the door, but the moment he looked away from Molly and towards freedom, it didn’t matter.

It was not a surprise when she pounced on him once again, but this didn’t stop his cracked lips from releasing a screech.

At once Molly had the bag pressed over his mouth, silencing his sounds. All of them - his breathing cut off too, nothing more than bubbles of blood escaping his sealed nostrils. She dragged him slowly towards the hole in the wall. In the ensuing silence footsteps could be heard pounding up the stairs, but it was meaningless.

Brandon clawed at Molly’s forearms. The scabs and flesh he scraped away, the desperate way he began to try gnawing through the plastic bag… it was all futile. Molly used her body to close the door behind her.

Within the room, now splashed in the blood of someone and some _ thing,  _ Jacob looked around wildly. Kayla had her arms crossed over her chest in a poor facsimile of a hug. “If Brandon’s waiting behind that stupid door to scare us…”

And within the darkness, Brandon let out a lonely, breathless, protesting sound. The plastic bag over his mouth was wet and clinging, and saliva dripped onto his raw wounds from Molly’s open jaw. Finally, his hand hit the wall, a single  _ thump _ followed by deafening nothing.

“Open the door,” said Kayla shakily.

“Are you crazy? That thing could still be in there.” Megan looked incredulously from the door to her friend.

“We can’t just leave him in there, if it dragged him after it - ”

“If what that old lady said was true,” Jacob interrupted. “He’s already dead.”

They seemed to collectively hold their breath. “This is crazy,” Emily finally announced. “I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

“But you can’t drive,” Kayla backed towards the hallway, her eyes still on the door. “You’re still tipsy and, and none of us have the keys, Austen and Brandon have them, and we don’t know where they are and, and,” she swallowed visibly. “Oh, god.”

Megan grabbed her shoulder and shook it. “Driving tipsy doesn’t seem so bad compared to whatever else is going on here,” she said, a rare moment of agreement with her sister. “For that matter, neither does hotwiring.”

“Do you even know how to hotwire?” Emily sounded like she was trying to snear and failing miserably.

Unexpectedly, Jacob wrapped an arm around her in a comforting gesture. “I do,” he admitted. “Let’s go.”

Caught in varying states of reluctance and fear, the four went back downstairs. Jacob brought up the rear of the group, nearly walking backwards with how often he turned to keep an eye on the ominously empty doorway. His shoulders were so tense you could’ve snapped a board across them.

Back on the ground floor, Megan strode quickly to the front door, opening it into a drizzle that was quickly becoming a downpour. She ducked into the water without hesitation, Jacob right behind her (as soon as he’d turned on his phone’s flashlight). Kayla, however, hesitated when she saw Emily stop on the porch. “What’s up?”

“I don’t want to get soaking wet,” Emily said with a sniff. Kayla stepped closer, the darkness of the moonless night barely illuminating the way Emily was shivering.

Side by side, they waited for Jacob and Megan to start the cars. Eventually, Emily whispered, “We should just go to get help. If we stay inside to look for the boys, then - I dunno. Something bad could happen.”

Kayla turned towards her with her mouth already open, an indignant expression on her face. It melted away, however, the longer she watched Emily hug herself and shiver. “Yeah, maybe,” she finally agreed. “Or you can go, and I can stay?”

“What if Megan and Jacob wanna go with me? Would you really stay on your own?”

No answer came, and by the cars Jacob wasn’t having much better luck. Megan watched him with her own arms crossed, her foot making squishing sounds in the mud each time she tapped it. “You’re doing it wrong,” she finally said, impatiently.

Jacob looked up from the wires he had clutched in his hands. Water streamed down Megan’s face, and in the gloom her eyes were two dark, disapproving glimmers. “I help my dad work on cars all the time,” he said. “I think I know what I’m doing.”

Though she waited for another long moment, and though sparks went off at one point and cast Jacob’s features in a ghoulish light, the car did not start. Finally, she turned and stormed towards the Buick, deciding to take a crack at it if Jacob wouldn’t let her help him. It was a little newer than Brandon’s car, but she still broke the plastic cover off the steering column, figuring she might as well try.

A minute passed, then five, then ten. Megan wiped at her forehead with her wrist. Her mouth was set in a stern frown, and when she turned around to ask Jacob how he was doing, a scream nearly burst from her. He was standing right behind, chewing his bottom lip anxiously.

“How’s it going?” He asked, not noticing (or perhaps just not remarking on) how she’d freaked out.

Sighing heavily, Megan admitted, “It’s not. Any luck on your end?”

From the way his shoulders slumped, it was evident the answer was no. The pair headed back to Kayla and Emily, shaking their heads when Kayla shouted to them, “Did the cars start?”

The phone’s meager light swept the ground, Megan and Jacob both squinting as they tried to avoid the worst of the growing puddles. Their jeans were already soaked and splattered with muck, but when Megan ground to a halt, it wasn’t because she’d stumbled over a stone or into deeper water.

No, instead she’d stepped on a rake.

What would’ve normally been mildly painful and hugely embarrassing was made suddenly horrific by an addition to the handle Molly had apparently made. A dessicated porcupine corpse, speared through and tied at the limbs to keep it in place where hands would normally go. The spines were as sharp as they had been in life, unfortunately for Megan.

In an instant spines plunged everywhere into her face, puncturing through her cheeks to her mouth and sliding easily into her neck. But worst of all were the bunches that speared into her eyes.

Even that, perhaps, would’ve been fixable. If Megan hadn’t stumbled backwards, allowing the rake to fall back to the ground. And allowing it to take her eyes on the way.

Stunned, Jacob kept his flashlight trained on her the entire time. Emily watched with horrified eyes, screaming only when her sister did as well. When she tried to back into the house, she ran directly into Kayla, who had a hand on either of her shoulders and whispered things that were trying to be comforting, if only she hadn’t sounded terrified out of her mind.

Abruptly, Jacob scooped Megan up and carried her into the house, out of the rain. He leaned her against the inside wall next to the door, and Kayla stepped close to her, gingerly brushing her fingers through Megan’s hair as she fell to her knees. Emily seemed frozen, hyperventilating and unable to look away from her twin.

“What - what happened?” Megan asked, tongue thick with pain. “What…”

“You stepped on a rake,” Kayla said it incredulously, half-hysterical. “You stepped on a  _ rake.” _

“I swear to fuck, if this is what kills me, I’m going to punch god in the face.”

For all the forced humor in her statement, her face was too gruesome to laugh at. To start with, her neck was spurting blood from a few of the puncture wounds that the makeshift mace had left behind; Kayla pressed both hands to it, but they slipped and she was frightened of choking her friend. Some needles had been left behind in Megan’s throat and cheeks as well, turning her into a nightmarish pincushion. But worst of all were her eyes.

Empty sockets yawning outwards, weeping blood freely. Kayla shivered, and said, “You’re in shock. We have to - fuck. I can’t call 911; I don’t have a signal. Jacob?”

“No. Neither do Megan and Emily. We were talking about it before you got here.” He looked up from his phone, his face washed out pale.

“Okay, we can find a way out of this, okay. Neighbors? I didn’t see any nearby when we pulled in, but I mean, this place was pretty overgrown, so, could be?”

“Austen said there wasn’t anyone, everything is farmland out here so they’re way spread out.”

“We can…” Kayla bit her lip hard enough for blood to bead up from her skin, too.

“She’s too cold.”

Everyone turned to Emily, even Megan with her literally empty gaze. Squaring her jaw, she repeated, “She’s too cold. We need to light a fire. Look how she’s shaking.”

“Oh,” Kayla sounded genuinely surprised, but then, she herself was also shivering.

“The - ” Megan coughed, another spurt of blood escaping between Kayla’s fingers as she did. “The fireplace?”

“There isn’t any wood in it, but we can try the stove?” said Jacob, shining his phone light into the neighboring room. Everyone agreed, though in practice moving Megan was more complicated than originally expected. She tried to stand on her own, but quickly stumbled and nearly took Emily to the floor with her. Jacob was helpful, but still, by the time they made it over Megan was paler and clammier than ever.

Handing care of Megan’s neck over to Jacob, Kayla patted through Megan’s pockets in search of her lighter. “Don’t take advantage,” Megan croaked at her, another joke that fell flat as soon as it was said.

The little, purple cylinder turned out to be in her jacket, so Kayla managed to retrieve it without any scandalous touching. The front of the iron stove opened easily, and when Kayla squinted into it, seemed to be mostly full. She flicked the lighter, muttering, “It better not all be ash.”

On the other hand, Jacob didn’t seem to be having much luck with Megan. He adjusted his hands on her throat, then winced and hissed as he was pricked by one of the quills in her flesh. As the flames caught and an acrid smell filled the room, he pinched the offending quill between thumb and forefinger, pulled on it, even when Megan began coughing.

“What are you doing?”

He pulled another off, and this time, Megan’s cough had a bubbling quality to it. Blood dribbled from her lips down her chin.

“What are you  _ doing?” _

Emily reached out to stop Jacob midway through. He looked up at her, his eyes wide in the flickering firelight. Kayla gasped, and neither moved, until she said, “Oh my fucking god there’s a squirrel in there.”

Sure enough, the shriveled eyes of a mummified squirrel stared at them. The fire was licking over its fur now, finally properly illuminating the source of the disgusting smell. Above that, above the blackness of the heating iron, loomed a pale shape. One with a gaping maw and empty sockets to match Megan’s.

A skull.

Molly pounced just as three of the four teens recoiled away from her. She landed with a hand on either of Megan’s shoulders, nails biting through denim and making Megan cough blood directly into her face.

Cracked lips split wide to reveal jagged teeth, but when Molly leaned forward Megan managed to get her forearm in the way. Instead of biting the injured girl’s throat, Molly sank her teeth into her flesh. It didn’t matter, Megan was already choking, but tearing flesh out of her wrist was better than the alternative.

In moments blood was sprayed over Kayla, Emily and Jacob. Kayla rose to help Megan, but Jacob’s hand closed over her wrist before she could interfere. “What are you doing?” She demanded, accidentally echoing Emily.

“We need to get out of here, or she’ll kill us too,” Jacob urged.

Jerking away, Kayla managed to free herself, only to bump into the stove and gasp in pain. Megan and Molly were still fighting, but it was obvious that Megan was going to lose sooner rather than later. And yet, when Kayla finally stepped towards her, Megan lifted her sightless head and said through gritted teeth,  _ “Go.” _

They went.

Jacob led the way, his hands clasped around Emily and Kayla’s wrists. Into the entrance room, past the filthy carpet, to what appeared at first to be a linen closet.

Once inside the small space, stairs to the basement revealed themselves. Light shone up them, flickering in time with thunder from outside.

Going down them quickly was its own kind of nightmare. Jacob had locked the door behind them, explaining that it couldn’t be unlocked from the outside, but then it was three people on a set of stairs that shook and swayed with each step.

The ceiling was as low as Austen had said, and Jacob was fully bent double at the halfway point. Cobwebs glinted above them, slow-moving spiders weaving around and around in endless, shaky, meaningless spirals. Kayla shuddered.

As soon as that door had closed, all sounds of Megan’s fight with Molly had been cut off. Whether unfortunate timing or a trick of acoustics, it was unsettling.

At the base of the steps, Emily sank to the floor and would move no further. Kayla sat beside her, inspecting her arm.

Bright, shiny red was revealed by the bare bulb hanging over their heads. It already looked to be blistering, and so Kayla could be forgiven for not being the one to speak up.

Instead, it was Emily. For the first time since things had begun to go wrong, she sounded calm once more.

“Why were you pulling the quills out of her neck?”

A long moment passed. For the third time in ten minutes, Jacob didn’t answer her. And so Emily asked again, her voice going a bit shrill as her patience ran out,  _ “Why were you pulling the quills out of her neck?” _

“It was hard to stop the bleeding like that,” Jacob explained, hands held palm out.

“It was hard to…” Kayla frowned. “But you’re not supposed to take something out of an injury.”

“Never,” Emily agreed. Finally she lifted her head from between her knees, and her eyes were all anger and fire. “Jacob, you weren’t trying to hotwire the car out there, were you?”

His shoulders slumped. He leaned backwards, until he was against the shoddy stone cylinder that stood in the center of the room. The loose slabs near the top wobbled with his movement, and the jars on the shelf next to him shone eerily red in the meager light. “Guess I got caught.” He sounded sheepish more than anything, and it had Kayla jumping to her feet and glaring angrily at him.

“You were  _ trying  _ to get her killed? To get  _ all  _ of us killed?”

“Well,” Jacob looked up, as though inspecting the place where Megan lay above them. “Not all of us.”

Emily grit her teeth. “Let me guess, you were going to spare me? Because I’m your girlfriend?”

“Because I love you,” he corrected simply. He sounded so sure of himself.

“But you killed my sister.” Now Emily was standing beside Kayla, a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “You wanted to kill my best friend. You killed  _ your own _ best friend. Brandon - ”

“He was a two-faced bastard,” Jacob said dismissively. “You remember why I quit football, right babe? Brandon was right with the others bullying those poor freshmen, and when I stood up to him, he sold me out in a heartbeat. So what if he apologized? I probably lost scholarships because he froze me out of the team.”

The girls were both shocked out of immediate responses. Kayla eventually breathed, disbelieving, “Scholarships…”

“Austen?” Emily’s voice was a steely demand.

“It’s not what you’re thinking.” Jacob grinned sardonically. “I’m not a homophobe, but he was convenient. And you didn’t hear him describe Molly. She sounded  _ so cool. _ And I couldn’t kill anyone myself, obviously, so - ”

“So you used her.”

Stepping forward, Emily stared directly up at Jacob’s face. He seemed - open, honest, now. A slight smile grew under his well-groomed beard as he lifted his arms around her. It was obvious that he expected her to understand, now that he’d explained. “Think how much less stress you’ll have with Megan gone,” he added, just for good measure. “No more screaming at your parents, no more dangerous friends coming by late at night. Just peace and quiet while you study.”

“You know what would make things even quieter for me?” Emily asked sweetly. Behind her, Kayla was rooted in place.

“What?” Jacob’s eyes shone with an eagerness to do as she asked.

Lifting her arms in a mirror of his, Emily wrapped one hand around the back of his head, holding it in place as if to give him a kiss. She went up on her toes -

“If you died too, fuckwad.”

And smashed him in the head with a jar.

Red fluid splashed everywhere. Jacob’s hands went up to his head, cradling it as he fell to his knees. Emily grabbed Kayla’s hand and they ran up the stairs; near the top, she stomped as heavily as she could near the anchoring point at the wall. Sure enough, the stairs came loose with a splintering sound, and they barely made it to the linen closet before it came crashing down.

Still they could hear Jacob cursing, and knew he wasn’t down for the count. He was larger than either of them by a significant amount, and Kayla and Emily were far from fighters. Hell, Kayla might’ve still had a fair amount of booze in her system. Not much time had passed, despite the way horror had drawn the night into a seemingly endless torment.

“We need to split up,” Emily whispered.

“What? No!”

“Listen,” Emily pressed her palms to Kayla’s face, forcing her to meet her eyes in the darkness. “We don’t know where Molly is. As soon as I open that door, we have to go in two different directions. With any luck, she’ll go after the trapped prey. Got it?”

“...Emily, I…”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Call me,” Kayla grabbed Emily’s wrists and pressed their foreheads together. “If you get out of this, as soon as it’s safe. Call. My phone won’t ring if I’m still in the house, so if I’m hiding you won’t give me away.”

“Okay.” A crash from downstairs had both flinching. “Ready?”

One final, solemn nod, and then Emily was counting down with her hand on the door. “Three, two, one!”

As soon as the door was open Emily ducked to the right, with Kayla going left. Perhaps because Emily couldn’t stand the thought of going past Megan’s body; there was no way to know.

In the kitchen, Emily skidded to a stop. The room was strangely pristine, even after everything. She started to tiptoe towards the bathroom, and therefore the door to the back porch, but paused. Something eerie hung in the air. Water dripped from the ceiling behind her, and the thunder continued outside. A single flash of lightning illuminated the room for a split second.

Something dark was moving up there. Emily’s eyes rose, painfully slowly, to take in the strange stain on decades-old plaster. It shifted, and lightning flashed once more.

Thunder boomed in time with Emily’s realization that she was staring directly at Molly.

Shoes squeaking on the hardwood, Emily made an abrupt about-face and rocketed towards the entrance room. Molly dropped with a  _ thump _ behind her.

Her gnarled hand was a beat too late to catch the back of the girl’s shirt.

Ten feet to the front door now. Eight. Six. The carpet scrunched and slid under her feet, almost causing her to stumble.

Just in time, Emily managed to keep herself upright. If she could reach the door -

The floor went out from under her.

Down she fell, her last sensations that of her fingers scrambling at the worn edges of the rug. And then she was in darkness, for a moment that was less than a second and an eternity all at once. When she hit the ground, the breath left her body, and she found herself cocooned in what seemed like total darkness.

Slowly, she managed to cough air back into her lungs. When she stirred, no injuries made themselves apparent. The reason for this quickly became clear; she had landed in a  _ nest. _

The floor was piled high with filthy rags and rotting furs. They stank, but they had cushioned her fall. She lay in a circular room with ramshackle, pale grey stone walls. It was clearly the center of the basement. When she listened for a moment, she heard neither Jacob nor Molly coming after her.

Aside from the nest, the room contained a few vegetables still crusted with dirt, assorted farming tools in varying stages of rusting, a curiously untouched red ceramic bowl, and a hole near the edge that yawned into pitch blackness.

Though the walls would not be difficult to climb, the gaps at the top were far too thin to fit Emily’s body through. Swallowing hard, she crawled to the edge of the hole and stared down into it. “Here goes nothing,” she said to herself. “Hope this thing isn’t her toilet.”

Crawling forward, she let the darkness swallow her up.


	3. Chapter 3

Kayla headed for the front door at first, but was brought up short by the sight of a dark shape slumped in front of it. In a calmer state than Emily would be in a few short seconds, she was able to recognize Megan’s corpse. Her throat _was_ ripped open, in addition to the spines still sticking out of her and the numerous bite marks on her exposed skin.

Thankfully, her eyelids had closed at some point. But that small mercy made Kayla no more inclined to knock her over in order to escape. Instead, she turned towards the living room, and when that way saw no more obstacle than a few splashes of blood, the bathroom. She hesitated when she saw the stairs going up, but shook her head and ultimately chose not corner herself on the topmost floor.

In the bathroom, however, she found something which made her wish she’d ignored her friend’s dead body. Molly, with her back turned, chittering as she grasped for Emily.

Kayla looked left and right for somewhere she could hide, before the monster could turn around. The back door was too far - but the bathtub was right beside her.

She pulled the curtain aside and almost jumped in. For the second time in under a minute, however, she was overwhelmed by a sight no teenager should ever have to deal with.

Austen lay in the tub, his body an absolute ruin. Most of his ribs were exposed, whether through the way they’d been broken or because Molly had ripped away strips of his skin with her bare hands. His shirt was no more than a few shredded rags hanging off him. When Kayla forced herself to reach down and try to move him, she found that one of those protruding bones was hooked on the bathtub drain.

There was no time to be respectful. She stepped on him as she tried to situate herself in the tub, and ended up pressed with her front to his back. Blood soaked into her side, disturbingly warm in the cooling night.

Elsewhere, Emily screamed, but it was strangely muffled. And it wasn’t followed by any sounds of fighting, or - Kayla shuddered - crunching. Just a deafening silence. And then…

Footsteps.

“Kayla?” It was Jacob, not Molly, but Kayla didn’t relax one bit. In fact, she held her breath.

“Kayla, are you in here? Do you know what happened to Emily?”

Almost, _almost,_ Kayla answered. But it was a good thing she didn’t.

Over Austen’s stiffening shoulder, in the thin space between the shower curtain and the wall, she saw Jacob step into the dim moonlight from the window. And she saw something else blot out that light.

She had just long enough to flick her eyes from the large shovel in Molly’s hands to the back door before the monster struck.

Before Jacob could so much as gasp, the blade of the shovel was plunged through his belly. It came out the other side in a torrent of blood, scooping out ropes of intestines on its way. He looked down at himself, clearly shocked, and grabbed the slick metal just as blood began to pour from his mouth.

Although the sight was horrifying, for the way Molly twisted her weapon inside him, for the putrid scent that rose as she burst his organs, for the slick pink and purple barely visible in the night, Kayla didn’t hesitate. She burst from the tub and ducked between the shocked Molly and dying Jacob, and though her feet slid in his blood, she made it to the door unscathed.

In a moment she had turned the handle, stepped onto the back porch, and into a seemingly impenetrable wall of leaves. They caught and scratched at her skin and clothes, but she persevered even as cuts opened up on her arms and legs. And then, all at once, she was on the other side.

Rain had her soaked to the bone in mere moments. Turning around, she couldn’t see the door through the ridiculously huge bushes, but the house loomed, deceptively dark and peaceful. Shivering, she made her squelching way around it, until she stood on that circular lawn once more. The tree above her swayed in the wind, and she whispered, “What was it Megan called you? Widowmaker?”

Of course the tree didn’t answer, and so Kayla leaned against it with a sigh. She pulled her phone out, huddled close to her chest to protect it from the weather, but she still had no signal (unsurprising, considering the storm). Turning the flashlight function on, she illuminated the ground around her - and suddenly stiffened.

“My footprints!” She darted the light up, to see if Molly had followed her obvious trail from the house, but the night was still but for the sheets of rain and wind.

Slowly, she swept that narrow beam across the lawn, a look of intense concentration on her face. When the light glinted off one of the windows, however, she froze.

Molly stared out at her, eyes invisible under the shadows of her omnipresent skull mask, but undeniable. She didn’t move, either towards the door or away, but nor did she look away from Kayla. Swallowing, Kayla stared back, slowly shifting around the tree until she was just peeking out from the side of it. Still, Molly made no move. Only stared.

“Why won’t she…” Kayla bit her bottom lip. “Okay, okay. What did Jacob say about her, again? She got bitten by a rabid raccoon…”

_“She was babbling crazy stuff and tried to bite the nurses when they tried to give her a bath.”_

Realization had Kayla slumping until she was left squatting in the roots of the mammoth tree. “She’s afraid of the water. She won’t go out in the rain,” she said to herself. “All this time, and we could’ve just walked the fuck away. That rake - she must’ve set it up beforehand. Fuck. _Fuck!”_

Punching the ground, Kayla was heedless of the splashes of mud she left herself caked in. _“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!_

“It didn’t mean anything. We all could’ve lived. Fucking - Jacob, fucking stupid hydrophobia, fucking murderous fucker! Fuck!”

Sobs cut off her profane tirade. She wailed, sounding more than a bit like a beast herself, and trailed off with a final, hiccuping, “Fuck.”

Rain fell. Kayla pressed the heels of her filthy palms to her eyes, and cried away the muck in thick streams down her face. Thunder boomed. Kayla sniffled snot and grass clippings into her nose, then promptly sneezed. Her sobs morphed into hysterical laughter, almost drowned out by the water pounding down.

By the time she had calmed somewhat, the storm was no longer quite so heavy. When she checked her phone, however, she had no more signal than before. “I need to get to higher ground,” she muttered to herself. “The tree…”

But a quick glance up at it had her shaking her head. The branches didn’t start until well above her, and the base of the trunk was too wide for her to wrap her arms around. “Can’t go back in the house, can’t ask a neighbor, can’t work the cars,” she chewed her bottom lip in thought. Her phone light flicked around the sheds and chicken coop on the property, searching for an alternative. She found it.

“Barn it is, then. Who cares about a hole in the floor, it can’t be worse than _this.”_

A pair of nasty hooks on rusted chains leaned against the barn. Kayla almost grabbed one, for protection, but shook her head before her fingers could make contact with the rain-chilled metal. “No more fighting. I’m safe now, why can’t I get that through my head. Fuck.”

The double door stuck at first when she tried to pull it open, but gave with a crunching sound that made her wince. “Hope Austen’s mom won’t mind the broken door, considering.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she seemed to crumple, actually taking a half step back at the memory of Austen’s body, decomposing in the bathtub. Setting her jaw, she forced herself forward.

After the chaos of outside, the barn seemed eerily quiet. Kayla gagged a bit at the strong scent of urine in the room, and sure enough, found herself skirting around the large hole in the dirt floor. The room she was in wasn’t nearly as large as the whole barn, and in fact contained a pair of moth-eaten couches covered in dubious stains.

Through a second sliding door, she found an even more unexpected sight. Instead of the usual stalls for barn animals, or bales of hay, or anything else typically found in a barn, there was what looked like an old bar. A coke machine sat beside an ancient cash register, and stools were lined up neatly in front of a selection of broken or empty bottles.

More importantly, however, this second (larger) room had a set of stairs going upwards. They looked worn down, but were certainly more structurally sound than the ones to the basement had been.

One step. Two. Kayla started to look down, only to stop herself with a hand on the railing. Goosebumps rose on her arms.

“It’s fine,” she told herself. “Molly can’t go out in the rain. It’s fine.”

Halfway up she stopped to check her phone. Still, there was nothing, so she bit her top lip and kept going. Blood beaded up and slipped down the side of her chin.

At the top of the stairs she found herself on a walkway that circled the whole room. It was level with some of the rafters, and so perhaps she should’ve been less surprised when something fell from just in front of her and landed with a thump on the rickety planks. But as it was she jumped backwards, and almost turned to run before she realized it wasn’t moving to attack, and couldn’t be Molly.

In fact, it looked too small to be a person at all. But when Kayla shone her light on it, the truth of the situation had her falling onto her ass in shock.

Emily lay on the ground, a hoe stuck in her chest. It looked like it had been stabbed into her several times before being dragged downwards a ways, exposing some of her sticky-slick insides, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. All four of her limbs had been removed. The jagged edges on them and the gore crusting the hoe’s blade told a story of Molly standing on her victim and bringing down the tool again and again, hacking off each piece one by one until Emily stopped moving.

Now, her mouth hung open and her eyes were glazed. Kayla swallowed hard, then whispered, “Not you too.”

When she made to crawl towards her friend, however, she paused. “If you’re in here… and you c-couldn’t have crawled, then that means - ”

For the umpteenth time that night, Kayla managed to narrowly avoid death by throwing herself to the side suddenly. This, however, took her off the edge of the walkway.

Barely managing to catch herself on the edge of the railing, Kayla watched as Molly lumbered over to her. Those eyes glittered with an inhuman intelligence.

Desperation took over. Kayla swung her legs twice to gain momentum, then let go.

Grasping onto a nearby rafter, Kayla pulled herself onto the thick beam of wood. She was already panting, but when she turned she saw Molly hopping down to join her, so she didn’t take the chance to rest.

If things had been different, perhaps Kayla would’ve been the one to come out on top. If she’d been less cold from her time in the rain, or less tired from the trying night. If she’d had less to drink earlier. If Molly hadn’t been quite so _hungry._ If, if, if. But there was no way to know for sure, and none of these _ifs_ were true.

So, Kayla’s foot slipped.

Just like Emily had, Kayla fell. The important difference was that, when Molly tried to catch her, she _succeeded._

For a split second Kayla hung suspended by one of her braids. Hair was hardly intended to hold a human’s body weight, unfortunately.

Screaming, Kayla hit the ground, clutching at her half-scalped head. She didn’t even seem to notice that one of her shins had a long spire of bone protruding from it until she tried to stand. On the ground, leaking blood from her leg and _worse_ from her head, she somehow allowed herself only a few seconds to gasp for breath - but even as she was forcing herself onto one knee and both hands, Molly was leaping down behind her.

Like a worm in the dirt, Kayla squirmed and crawled her way towards the doors. She actually managed to get past the couches, around the hole, to reach _both_ arms into the fresh night air, before Molly grasped her by the ankle and pulled her back in.

You see, Molly had been stopping every few feet to eat the pieces sloughing out of Kayla’s ruined head. But those small snacks weren’t enough to distract her for long.

Seeming not to understand that her own survival was already forfeit, Kayla had taken this into account. Her hand came up, holding that rusted, discarded hook, and plunged it into Molly’s shoulder. The creature screamed, and lifted her own weapon.

Emily’s disembodied leg.

Under an onslaught of blows, Kayla succumbed quickly. Molly continued to beat her long after she was dead, bruising both the new corpse’s flesh, and the old’s.

And then, things were still.

Two days passed, and the land remained undisturbed in that time. When the storm began again, it did not do so quietly.

Austen’s mother wasn’t the one to find them, luckily. Instead, it was her newest intern.

“Heard he pissed himself when he walked into the house,” said Policeman Miller to Policeman Smith.

“Did he,” Smith said, politely disinterested as she continued to roll out barricade tape.

“Yup. I also heard, one of the victims, Jacob Morris? His great-aunt used to own this place.”

“That’s quite a coincidence,” Smith was about to turn her back to him completely when tires crunching on gravel caught her attention.

A trio of motorcycles rolled into the driveway, one red, one green, and one blue. They were driven by three women in denim jackets with their sleeves cut. A fourth rode on the back of the blue one, and her helmet’s blank, pink face reflected Policeman Smith’s trepidation back at her.

“Hyenas,” she said tersely.

Miller looked back and forth between his coworker and the newcomers in confusion. “You know them?” He asked her.

“So will you,” she replied darkly. “What are you doing here?”

“We wanted to know if you had any suspects.” The woman on the green motorcycle pulled off her helmet, revealing a head of short hair the same shade as her ride. “One of those kids was ours too. We have a right to know.”

Crossing his arms, Miller replied, “Hey, if you’re civilians then you can’t - ”

Smith cut him off. “Ari - ”

“Don’t call me that!”

She frowned and put her hands on her hips, right beside the gun hanging from her belt. “Hyenas. You know we only found the bodies today. It’s too soon to know anything.”

“But do you have clues?”

Now, Smith hesitated, and the green-haired woman tilted her head like a dog scenting prey. “You can’t think this is related to _those_ rumors, can you?”

“We aren’t allowed to level the house,” Smith replied. “That’s all I can say. And there are - inconsistencies. With the blueprints.”

Shocked, Miller looked between Smith and the Hyenas. “Hey, you can’t tell them that!”

All Smith gave him in response was a sigh. The Hyena’s leader nodded, as though this settled something, and said, “How long before you all head out?”

“A week at the most. There’s nothing for us here but a lotta kids who died way too young. They were graduating this spring, you know.”

“We know.” Putting her helmet back on, the woman cleared her throat. “Megan will be missed.”

They all headed out with nary another word. Miller did a very good job of looking angry when he turned on Smith, but it didn’t cover his frightened confusion completely. Smith gave him a sad smile. “What were you thinking? Those ladies - they’re part of a gang, aren’t they?”  
  
“They are.”

“And you gave them confidential information! Information the _chief_ said wasn’t even relevant, because this house is just some dumb urban legend, and there’s no - ”

“Miller. Do you know what the teeth patterns on that girl’s body are going to turn out to be?”

“...What?”

“A raccoon.”

“But they’re way too big to be a raccoon.”

“And that’s why,” here, she put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke as though the weight of the world was on her shoulders. “We let them handle it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Boy howdy do I feel shitty at having taken such a long break from AO3 but like, in my defense, there's been stuff goin on behind the scenes with the moderators (suffice it to say the Detroit: Become Human fandom turned out to be 95% sweethearts and 5% people David Cage himself would probably get along with). Take this mindless fun gorefest and if y'all like it I might write more in the same universe <3


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